


Revival

by zenstrike



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Familial Love, Gen, Homecoming, Post-Canon, Team as Family, elaborate headcanons re: lance’s family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: Lance has two families, baggage, and a brother who loves him.





	Revival

They fight over Lance.

Quietly, yes. But a fight’s a fight and Marco shows up swinging. He’s out of practice by the time Lance decides to put his feet up (he snores on the couch for most of the first week he’s home) but Lance has always been everyone’s favourite and Marco has always had to fight for his brother’s attention. His muscles remember, like they remember the tack of strings under his fingers and the taste of rosin on the air that one time Lance helped him prep for a recital with a little too much vigour—a little too much Lance.

“Go get ‘em!” Lance had cheered, too loud, before dashing back to his seat between Marco’s mother and Veronica. He had flashed Marco a grin and clapped so hard his hands were red for a while after.

There was nothing to get except a little bit higher.

“Go get ‘em,” Marco had written on a note, tucked next to treats and clean clothes as Lance left for the Garrison again after one long Christmas break. Lance, already tired but still determined—  _ I’m going to be a pilot _ , Lance had said at eight, at ten, at thirteen.

He snores on the couch and Regina watches him like she doesn’t recognize her son in the tired man draped over her furniture. Marco knows she’s memorizing his features like Veronica does, like Marco’s mother does, like Marco tries to.

The heart remembers, and Lance tucks the note back into Marco’s hands with a blue lion looming behind him. “See you soon,” Lance promises around a grin and Marco dreams about him for weeks.

So. They fight over Lance.

Lance has two families now, so Marco starts with the Paladins and he sets himself as steadily as he can.

“He’s sleeping,” he tells Keith, whose name is sour on his tongue and whose scars make Marco wonder what his brother is hiding. 

“He’s sleeping,” he repeats, and Pidge throws her hands hands into the air but goes home.

Hunk calls three times and Regina makes him promise to  _ let them have Lance, just for a bit _ .

Takashi Shirogane, a stupefying legend, hovers behind all of this and studies Marco and Veronica and Luis like he understands.

Day two, Luis sits next to Lance on the couch and peppers him with impatient questions that Lance answers sleepily, with obvious exaggeration and the kind of embellishment that makes Marco think Luis doesn’t need to hear the truth yet.

Marco tucks Luis into bed and Luis snores louder than Lance. Lance observes that he’s grown, but barely, and sleeps with Lance’s old glow-in-the-dark stars stuck over his bed.

Day three, Veronica returns from New York with her fiance in tow and her teeth bared. “It’s been  _ months _ ,” she all but growls but her would-be husband pulls her back and then it’s just Regina and Marco with Lance yawning between them.

“He just got home,” Regina snaps, uncharacteristically short and her eyes frazzled and maybe—maybe—too bright. Veronica and Lance have their father’s eyes but their mother’s fire—her flow—and glaring at his step-mother reminds Marco that he has a battle to win. “He just got home  _ from a war.” _

__ From a place far out of their reach. Regina understands better than anyone because she’s the only one, Marco is sure, who understands what it is to love someone so completely your life is a little dimmer without them. They had mourned Lance together, and then celebrated his miraculous return from impossible space-faring adventures, and then lashed out at each other when Lance vanished to the stars again.

“Ma,” Lance mutters and rubs a hand over his eyes.

“I have a plan,” Marco announces.

Lance blinks at him. He laughs.

He takes Lance to Toronto. He and Regina barely speak the day they leave.

Toronto has no beach and no ocean, but it has buildings and voices and Marco’s work. His brother dozes on his couch and uses his computer.

The heart remembers.

“Are you Canadian now?” Lance asks, plucking indelicately at Marco’s E string until Marco snatches his violin away. 

“Are you an alien now?” Marco snaps back.

Lance huffs and throws himself back on the floor of Marco’s tiny apartment and stares at the ceiling. The claustrophobia does him good. 

Regina and Marco’s mother call every day. Lance talks to them, or tries to, every day. Marco returns from practice to see Lance reading, or watching TV, or listening to music too loud. His fingers tap restlessly. His knee jiggles. His eyes study everything with care and attention that wasn’t always there before.

He is remembering, Marco thinks—but how much of that is flashbacks and how much of that is storage? The heart remembers, flexing in the chest and building connections that weren’t supposed to be there.

Marco never asks about the lions, or the other paladins, or what Lance wants to do. He isn’t sure he’s earned this victory, this small win that’s clear in the moments when it’s just him and his long lost brother sitting, found, on his couch.

A month after the Paladins return, apparently for good, Marco gives Lance main floor tickets to the first performance of the season.

Beethoven’s 9th. A triumph, the programme says. A triumph of art, of devotion, of inspiration. Marco, in his seat behind his concertmaster, feels part of something powerful and great. It is an achievement, their conductor crows. His concertmaster agrees, shyly, to  _ go for coffee sometime _ .

Lance cheers when Marco admits this. They share a pizza. Lance’s eyes sparkle and his teeth show as he grins.

That night, Marco dreams about the awkward dinner at Regina’s old place, about his mother and Regina making soft eyes at each other and about Lance rubbing vindictive frijoles into his hair. And then, Lance apologizing with a tissue stuck up his bleeding nose:  _ I’m sorry Isabel, my mom loves you Isabel. _ And then, Lance in a hoodie and scowling at the half-size violin Marco cradles:  _ we’re brothers now _ .

Marco wakes and Lance has cooked him breakfast.

“What?” Marco says and frowns at the thin pancake Lance flops onto his plate. His apartment smells like Regina. He thinks that this is not an accident, and that Lance is getting ready to shove him back into his step-mother’s arms.

Lance puts his hands on his hips and looks down at Marco. “I’m going to be a pilot,” he says and grins so wide his face looks ready to split.

“Oh yeah?” Marco says and doesn’t manage to hide all of his relief.

“Oh yeah,” Lance replies and slaps way too much cream onto Marco’s pancake and they bicker good naturedly.

“All he needed was space,” Regina concedes when Marco (finally, finally, finally) calls her.

“Maybe,” Marco says instead of arguing with her and he tries not listen to his brother yell excitedly with his other family. Voices come tinny from the speakers of Marco’s computer, but it’s good enough.


End file.
